Gd-doped GaN studied with element specificity: Very small polarization of Ga, paramagnetism of Gd and the formation of magnetic clusters

Element specific X-ray linear dichroism (XLD), X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) at the Ga K- and Ga and Gd L-3-edges and magnetic resonance measurements have been carried out on Gd:GaN grown by molecular beam epitaxy with different Gd concentrations. XMCD studies at the Ga K-edge reveal only a very weak magnetic polarization, which is too small to account for the colossal moments reported before by SQUID. In the dilute limit we can show by XLD that the majority of the Gd dopant atoms go to substitutional Ga sites. XMCD studies demonstrate that the Gd sublattice behaves paramagnetic which is in contrast to integral SQUID measurements. The absence of ferromagnetic order at room temperature is corroborated by magnetic resonance studies. First signatures of phase separation are visible. At higher Gd concentrations phase separation is found by XLD. In such samples ferromagnetic-like order is consistently found by SQUID, XMCD and magnetic resonance which is characteristic for a blocked superparamagnetic ensemble. In turn, phase separated ferromagnetic Gd/GdN clusters cannot account for magnetic order observed at and above 300 K by SQUID. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.